In existing technologies, access to information is typically provided to terminal devices such as telephones, fax machines, ADSI phones, and data modems, through the telephone network from information servers. The information servers could provide access to information stored in a database by using DTMF protocols, POSI protocols, voice, etc. Such systems include e-mail servers, fax servers, ADSI servers, voice servers, database servers and computer telephone integration (CTI) servers. As the Internet became prevalent, another method to distribute information emerged, which is the HTTP server. However, the information flow in HTTP servers is typically in HTML format, but may be in other formats such as JAVA, XTML, PDF, etc. These formats used by the HTTP server are different from the other types of servers. Moreover, HTTP servers have historically been stand-alone devices, in that they do not normally access information stored in other types of information storage devices. Consequently, there is a problem when the information that the HTTP server needs to distribute is not resident on the HTTP server, but is located on another type of server. Because of the difference in format and their stand-alone nature, HTTP servers have difficulty in accessing data stored in a non-HTTP oriented host. This problem is magnified for information distribution centers, which would often have more than one HTTP server to permit the response to a large volume of requests and/or information flow.
A prior art solution to this problem is that each type of server had to be connected to the HTTP server via a specific set of hardware and software, that would not work for the other types of servers. However, this solution is problematic in that it is inflexible because each type of server being connected to the HTTP server must be separately configured, as it is difficult for the HTTP server to access data on multiple information servers if they are all different from each other. Also, all of the processing involved with information retrieval from the other servers is performed by the HTTP web server, which is inefficient, as the delay time for sending responses to browser requests is increased. Moreover, such connections become unmanageable in trying to connect multiple HTTP web servers into the system.
Therefore, there is a need in the art to have an interface that allows the HTTP server to readily communicate with the other types of information servers, particularly for the HTTP web server have information requests routed to the other servers and for the HTTP server to receive responses from these servers. Moreover, there is a need in the art to have an interface system that is capable of connecting multiple HTTP web servers to multiple interface nodes.